I know you’re probably thinking I’m crazy for suggesting this, because image heavy emails will likely either go straight to the spam folder, won’t show up or people will get pissed at waiting for the email to load and click delete. Thing is, you never know until you try!

A Personal Touch

Since deciding to give images a shot I went one step further and personalized an image for each person I reached out to in the hope that it might induce the warm fuzzy feeling you get when opening a funny personailzed e-card on your Birthday

In my previous job I used to get my colleague – Sean’s attention on QQ (the Chinese equivalent of MSN messenger) by sending him this:

So in honour of the office banter I used to enjoy with Sean I chose this image to use as the bread and butter of my image outreach campaign.

I’m no Photoshop expert but it only took me a couple of hours to personalize 130 of these images with the blogger’s first name (or website name if I couldn’t find their name):

You may argue that this is not worth the time but as it happens out of the dozens of different emails I’ve sent out so far it was an image rich email that landed me my first link

I’ll post the results of my first email outreach campaign in a future update once I have some measurable data to share!

In the meantime, here’s a copy of the exact email outreach template that landed me my first link:

You can try all sorts of techniques to see which works for you. It’s arguably better to not even mention your link in the first email and just compliment the blogger and try to strike up a conversation.

I’ve still got a lot to learn and will try various different techniques until I find a handful that work best.

Other ways to get Creative

Apart from images there are plenty of other ways to get creative with your email outreach. I’ve only just begun experimenting but Mike King, who’s been doing this a lot longer than me, has written some real “out of the box” tips for getting creative with your email outreach, including video! I recommend you check this gem of his out.

I’m pumped for trying video soon, but since this first email outreach session has consumed so much of my time this past week and a half I’m itching to get back to doing what I like doing most – blogging!!!

Comments

Hi Richard, thanks for sharing your broken link building strategy, it seems it’s already reaping dividends. I wonder how many of the 130 bloggers you contacted get back to you, hopefully at least 5- 10%. Another sterling post from Clambr, I just tweeted it.

Hey Richard, the image-method you use to pull people’s attention is smart! I believe I have not seen anyone do something like that. One question though: What if the email recipient is not able to view image on his/her mail agent – Have you thought about it and did something to overcome the problem?

Again, great post! I’ve just tweeted it and you’ve got a new friend on G+.

Glad you liked the post! It was a lot of fun playing around with! I hoped people would find it funny or different but unfortunately the response rate was really really low.

I think the reason for that is exactly like you said – people probably couldn’t see the images in their mail client.

I’d like to try using images again in the future, but next time would be better to imbed them so they don’t get blocked. Have no idea how to do that though lol.

Another problem with the above email, I think, is that I shouldn’t have fixed the broken link in the first message. I noticed that a few people fixed the link and never replied or even said thank you, so perhaps I’d have more success with the images if I simply used the one with the blogger’s name and “you have a broken link”.

Might try it again soon and see what happens

Really happy to make friends with you on G+ btw! I can’t get on much due to my terrible connection and the Great Firewall, but will try my best to get on more often and hang out there.